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Halo Wars Interview
“It’s the elephant in the room,” admits Graeme Devine, lead developer on Halo Wars. Sadly he’s not revealing the presence of Halo 3’s Sandtrap monster in this RTS. Instead, he’s talking about the fact that, with a few months still to go before the game’s released, Microsoft has announced that it’s closing Ensemble Studios.
“The week we were cancelled was bad,” he sighs. “But we aren’t about to make Ensemble’s last game a mailed-in, ‘let’s finish this for the sake of it’ game. We’re going to make Ensemble’s last game the most kick-ass Microsoft game ever, and they’re really going to regret closing us down.”
It’s hardly ideal circumstances in which to found a new facet of the franchise, but the results so far are looking promising. A recent opportunity to play through the tutorial reveals a title that manages to balance the requirements of RTS fans with those of an audience drawn in by the licence.
Ensemble has made some clever choices: the camera’s tight enough to allow the familiar animations and art design to capture the Halo feel, and the overall scale is grand, but still reassuringly intimate by RTS standards. The series’ trademark architecture and units have all survived the transition, and the title has clearly been built with continuity in mind – the frontend menus are identical to Halo 3’s, and while the music is no longer Marty O’Donnell’s, Ensemble’s composer has created a skillful pastiche.
There’s no doubt that Halo’s iconography is being exploited, but at least it has iconography suited to exploitation in the first place. It’s hard to tell whether it’s Halo or Xbox 360 that has left the game itself seeming far more focused than many RTSes, however. The handful of maps we play (granted, they’re tutorials) are essentially corridors, with the only detours coming in the form of some well-placed secrets, and the opening missions tend to favour single objectives, with Devine admitting that, as things progress, you’ll rarely have more than three different orders to juggle at any time.
Base-building has been similarly streamlined (and is tellingly introduced in the second mission, after players have gotten to doughnut some Warthogs around and fight a few Grunts) with a single resource – supplies from the orbiting support ship Spirit of Fire – and a clear tech progression for unlocking units.
The units themselves are the most satisfying element: there’s a handful of new additions, but the existing Halo ecology fits snugly into the rock-paper-scissors of an RTS, with Warthogs strong against Grunts but weak against Hunters, who in turn can be finished off relatively quickly by a small team of Spartans.
Ultimately, the licence is perhaps a curse as much as a blessing for Halo Wars. The audience definitely cares about the minutiae, but a lot of the big pieces fans love aren’t there: there’s no Master Chief or Cortana, and the game’s equivalents are slightly soulless. And, counter-intuitively, singleplayer is resolutely UNSC only.
“If we sell enough copies, perhaps you’ll get to play Covenant in the sequel’s campaign,” says Devine. It’s said with a laugh, but there’s an awkward silence afterwards. If there’s going to be a sequel, who’s going to make it?
I can see this game being good, ~8.5/10, but I cannot see the mass market buying into it. I'll be buying it, and I think I will enjoy it. I don't know about a lot of other people though....
I think I'll give this one a shot when it comes out. Halo universe in a RTS stylee could rock, if done correctly.
Poor buggers... The game is going to be middle-of-the-road. Relying on Halo fans to buy into an RTS game is a suspect strategy.
I think Halo fans are some of the most loyal and would buy into any Halo product. I've purchased comic books (I don't usually read comics), all the Halo books, an art book, etc. Don't think I'll be buying the game though, but I'm sure enough Halo fans will to make it a success. It's in good hands so I'm sure it'll be a solid RTS regardless of the Halo franchise its attached to.